Taking a Test Drive with PitchEngine

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By: Mike Bush

For two years, I’ve been saying that wire services like PR Newswire and BusinessWire are ripe for disruption. See here for 2014 and here for 2015.

And now, I’m excited to roll out someone to ~~champion my rants~~ serve as a challenger.

Jason Kintzler, Founder of PitchEngine, took some time to answer a few of my questions about his company’s service, and I don’t mind telling you that I came away ~~vindicated~~ impressed.

Let’s start with the basics. Here’s Jason’s description of PitchEngine:

PitchEngine is a tool for packaging up announcements for the modern web — social networks, email, mobile, etc. There is no traditional distribution (meaning we don't spam it to a list of unwilling recipients on your behalf). Pitches usually get great indexing in Google and perform much better on social sites like Facebook and Twitter (where your audience is) due to the visual nature and smartphone compatibility.

Note: If you caught Doug’s post earlier this week, you immediately start to think about the packaging part here.

From there, I asked Jason if PitchEngine is generating lots of buzz with reporters:

Sometimes, certainly. But the fact of the matter is that modern PR is only a small bit about reporters. Think about the people that really move the needle these days. They're online influencers. Sometimes they're already your customers. These are the people that can amplify your message and share your story. PitchEngine helps brands create content that's relevant to actual humans — not just SEO robots and RSS feeds.

Note: While I’d largely agree with Jason, there are still some traditional media folks who move the needle as well (we all have clients who want to see their name in print in the newspaper).

One of the things that strikes me about PitchEngine is that it’s either a replacement for or a competitor to corporate newsrooms. Here are Jason’s thoughts:

It can replace your news site, or brands can simply embed their PitchEngine stream on their news page.

Note: I know lots of companies outsource their newsrooms, but this part of the discussion gives me a debate. On one hand, from the User Experience standpoint, I don’t want to ask people to leave my website. On the other, having a vibrant site hosted on a different server could help with SEO and online reputation management. I fall in the middle here.

So, what say you Flacks? Shall we take PitchEngine out for a ride?

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About the Author

Mike Bush is a PR and Marketing freelancer with more than a dozen years of experience in the field. Find him on and connect Twitter @mikebush or at www.mikebush.nyc.

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